We were particularly enamoured by The Eternal Life of Goldman's stunning hand-drawn aesthetic when we first glimpsed it at this year's THQ Nordic Showcase, but today's behind-the-scenes deep dive has seriously blown our socks off.
On paper, this platforming adventure is as charming as they come. There's an adorable elderly protagonist, a mysterious backdrop packed with folklore and fairytale references, and what appears to be a sweet gameplay flow consisting of running, jumping and cane-whacking. But the visuals really are the scene-stealer here, and that's what the publisher's new video is all about.
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In the above trailer, producer Andreas Schmiedecker runs us through the animation process that developer Weappy Studio has used to present Goldman as a cut above the rest. As the footage shows, everything in this platformer is hand-drawn and animated frame-by-frame without the help of any AI or other generation methods.
What this produces is an aesthetic that Schmiedecker puts between classic animated movies and Belgian comics — and we can see why. It looks really rather stunning and we're excited to see more of this one in the future.
The Eternal Life of Goldman's release date is still in the TBA realm at the moment, but we'll be keeping an eye out over the coming months and will update you with news as soon as we hear it.
What do you make of this pretty picture? Cane bounce down to the comments and let us know.
[source youtube.com]
Comments 24
Oh wow, this looks stunning indeed!
Main character has that weightless movement you see all too often in video games but otherwise everything looks incredible. Will be keeping my eye on this one.
The socks have been blown off. OFF I TELL YA.
Quite interesting video and the game itself looks so good, absolutely looking forward to it!
That truly is a gorgeous-looking game! Maybe a pickup next year on the Switch Deux.
Mannnnn ohh mannn. Ive been looking forward to this more then any other game on the horizon right now. You can almost smell the love that was put into this project through the screen. Details details details. It'll probably steal indie game of the Year award for the year it does come out. I felt the same almost about Plucky Squire but they really lost me with how hold handy and easy it was. I felt like I was playing something meant for a toddler.
Wow, yeah, that looks pretty amazing.
I do hope they didn’t bite off more than they could chew. This looks like it needs a HUGE budget to maintain so much detail throughout the game.
But if they pull it off, this could be one of the most beautiful games ever made.
Stunning - bravo for not using AI!
Looks fantastic. Hope the gameplay/game design turns out as good as the graphics. Sometimes that’s an issue with these games. But it looks promising so far.
This is gorgeous, and looks like a fun platformer too. Reminds me of DuckTales Remastered what with the cane and the visual style.
Looks really good but I kind of wish they have more cooler protagonist rather than just some old man.
With so many pixel graphics games these days, nice to see another game that approaches Ori level of art.
I gotta say, this has a similar amount of "awe" like when I first saw Rayman on the PS1 with so much color and fully drawn backgrounds, etc. The art and animation displayed here are amazing. I'd want to see more gameplay before getting excited about the game though. Real easy to spend all your funding in art and animation and then the gameplay mechanic being almost an afterthought. It was mentioned earlier about the main character looks a bit weightless. Hopefully that's a design choice for a reason and not just the gaming having loose controls. Eyecandy is off the chart. Hopefully the same itself has equal substance.
@Kingy Not that the controls need to be clunky per-se, but I noticed the same thing.
I think a big part of that perception comes down to the protagonist's animations. And rather, the lack of variety to his animations as he moves and interacts with the environment.
Kirby, and Sakurai as the creator, established a high standard for achieving immersion through intricate animations, where the protagonist can have unique animations not only for moving and standing, but also the moment you begin to move, the moment you stop moving, the moment you run into a wall, the moment you land on the ground, etc etc.
All those little moments of interaction are much more immersive when the game devotes unique animations for those little details. And when we see a game that lacks much of those finer details in the animation, the character can appear weightless or disconnected from the environment.
Absolutely love the look of this. Give me a physical for a day one purchase from this guy. This is the kind of next gen graphics I want to see more of. Screw that photo realistic crap and give me more hand drawn animation.
This is the THQNordic game made for me. It was specifically made for me as thanks for being the biggest sicophant the world has ever seen.
The Monkey's Paw is that they don't actually own this. This is an indie game they're giving an actual marketing budget too: like Trine 5. Though that's probably just because Weepy made 3 different entries in Nordic Games' first original IP; This is the Police. This is... Them letting Weepy have full control as thanks. That preexisting relationship is the reason this survived the Randy Purge.
But is it a case where the art came before well developed gameplay to the extent that the art could be an afterthought? Too many nice looking art projects that review poorly as video games these days.. I know artists out there looking for business opportunities, but undeveloped gameplay can be a disservice
Fantastic animation! It reminded me of "A Boy and his Blob".
Ugh I don’t wanna watch a trailer. I’m reading a website, not on YouTube. Gimme screenshots.
Wow, that looks beautiful, can't wait to wishlist it if they ever put up an eshop listing...
@Ulysses Well put, it's jarring whenever you see characters snap from one keyframe to another. It's not uncommon to animate characters this way, but it becomes especially noticeable in these hand-drawn games as opposed to something like NES Mega Man, who still looks natural in his environment despite having like five to six unique frames of animation depending on the game.
A middle finger to AI and French-Belgian comic inspiration?! I'll probably pick this up! I just hope that the "modern quality of life" features doesn't mean it's going to be super easy and that it does have some challenge like 16-bit era platformers.
Crikey, this does look nice indeed 👀. Keeping an eye on it!!
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